This is bonkers: from the ‘spaghetti western’ opening to the keystone cops chases. We see Christ on the cross announcing, just after dying, that there’ll be another performance later. It’s fascinating to see ‘swinging sixties’ ‘anything goes’ aesthetics recycled in Castro’s Cuba even if it’s often difficult to work out what’s going.

I’m ambivalent about this film: Sean Penn is fabulous (but then he normally is) but I almost fell asleep at one point. It might have been Gus van Sant’s functional direction that made me soporific or it could be the constraints of the biopic genre. To portray a life in two hours you obviously have to focus on key moments. Anyone with knowledge of Milk’s life would know what should be included; this immediately limits scriptwriters: events must be included regardless of their dramatic potential or cohesiveness. For me the story wasn’t gripping until Milk took on the Religious Right.

That said, Milk’s is an important tale as he fought successfully against bigotry. He seemed the ideal politician in that he decided to get elected to San Francisco’s Board of Representatives for a reason (Gay rights) and not for power. But Gus van Sant can’t resist sentimentalising Milk’s death (I haven’t given that away, that’s obvious from the start) with a long drawn out scene that even Penn struggles to make convincing.

It’s great to see ‘pretty boy’ James Franco embracing the role as Milk’s lover. It wasn’t long ago that Will Smith was advised (for Six Degrees of Separation, 1993, I think) not to engage in a ‘gay kiss’ as it would ruin his career. Hollywood remains homophobic but progress has been made.

‘Postmodern playfulness’ is usually simply irritating but with a scene where Tony Wilson’s wife is having revenge sex in a toilet (Tony points out he only got a blow job but that’s full penetration) with Howard Devoto, of the Buzzcocks, and the real Howard Devoto is a playing a cleaner who comments ‘I don’t remember that’ and Steve Coogan’s voice over narration is quoting John Ford about ‘printing the legend’… you know this film is going to be fun.

Such ‘confusion’ is ideal to portray the ‘mad’ Manchester of the ’80s. The film focuses of Tony Wilson who was the catalyst for Factory Records and the Hacienda nightclub; both important cultural events. The film’s brilliant at showing the often surreal quality of life: Ian Curtis’ epileptic fit whilst National Front bastards are rioting; Wilson’s invited into a brothel in the back of a car; the ‘sheepdog’ duck he reports upon in his day job for Granada Reports and so on.

One blogger complains that as a ‘docu-drama’ (presumably he meant dramadoc) it doesn’t show enough of the bands. That’s not the point of the film, although Tony Wilson says ‘this film’s not about me’ it obviously is. Watch Control (2007) for a fantastic portrayal of Joy Division (the scene where Ian Curtis visits Wilson’s home occurs in both) but watch this for a taste of what it might have been like at the time to be involved with Wilson.

Exploitation movies have a long history; basically films that seek primarily to titillate and shock cheaply whilst extracting maximum money from thrill-seeking youngsters. They became (more or less) mainstream in the late ’50s, along with the growth of the teen market; producer-directors such as Roger Corman churned out tons of movies independently of Hollywood. Unsurprisingly, they were usually horror movies. The premise of Teeth, a young girl has teeth in her vagina (vagina dentata) sits it squarely in this tradition and, just in case we didn’t notice it, characters are seen watching The Black Scorpion (1957) and The Gorgon (1964).

However, this is more than a thrill-seeker’s delight (though it is debateble whether males would actually get a thrill from the you-know-what’s-going-to-happen in this film), writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein has made a terrific film that delves into Freud, sexual politics, ethical questions and black humour; and it’s also a great exploitation movie.

The protagonist is a ‘silver-ring-thing’ character who has pledged to remain a virgin until marriage. The first half hour or so deals with the sexual repression involved in such an undertaking and pokes fun at such ‘moral minority’ campaigns. Of course, sex and violence must follow in this genre and there’s a wonderful uneasiness between ‘wanting to see and not see’ what’s going to happen. The film reclaims the conflicted spectator who’s been jaded by seeing too much in post-censorship film culture. Watch it if you dare.

British director Nic Roeg made the classic Don’t Look Now (1973) and followed up with a few interesting films. At the time I thought Eureka was one of them; now… I barely got to the end. What happened?

Films obviously can ‘date’; what looks fresh can go stale in comparison with films that follow. The social context changes, hence the idea of ‘timeless’ classics that are ‘universal’ and so speak to any age (and, allegedly, culture), and so the film’s relevance can be lost. The spectator changes, so 26 years later I am not the same person as the student-Nick Lacey in the early ’80s. As a youngster, for those with an open mind at least, you have an enormous amount of films to get through (all those Hitchcocks you haven’t seen!) so there’s a ‘cornucopia of delights’. Critical judgement is unhoned (though not necessarily wrong).

Having watched most of those ‘delights’, 20 years later, my minds full of movies (and 26 years of life) and so what seemed brilliant may now look irrelevant. Why’s Eureka crap now? I find the ’70s’ predilection for the zoom irritating (yes, I know this film was made a decade later), it simply draws attention to the filmmaking (but not in a Brechtian way) and the moral of the tale (greed is soulless) trite. So, maybe, it’s combination: the film style’s dated and the simple (if true) moral, while attractive to a youngster, has been seen too many times by an oldster.

I’ve just gotten around to update the key films list which has been languishing at 2005 for a few years. It’s an attempt to list the best films, and most influential films (which may be merely a box office phenomenon), in each year. I haven’t seen them all. Let me know if you think anything should be included (or excluded) and I’ll consider your suggestions.

Another Hollywood Iraq movie that did very little business; this one from MTV films. Focusing on the use of the ‘stop-loss’ clause that effectively drafted soldiers about to leave the army back to Iraq, this is not obviously commercial fodder. It’s not Hollywood’s fault, or the film-makers’, but the audience’s, that issue-driven films are rarely made – they don’t make enough money.

Kimberly Peirce is an interesting director for a project as she was successful with the issue-based Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and shows enough skill for a tense, action-driven opening in Iraq. The rest of the film focused on the problems of returning vets and places it in the genre with numerous post-World War II movies and some Vietnam films of the 1970s. I’m not sure Ryan Phillipe has enough weight for the lead, he has to be both thoughtful and macho, and there’s far too many fist-fights (though not enough for MTV’s target audience maybe). However, the material’s handled very well until the last 15 minutes where, I think, the film loses its way. Terrific cinematography from Chris Menges, by the way.

Although the opening is gripping (an ambush in Tikrit) the representation of the Iraqis is depressingly one-dimensional. I guess there was no ‘room’ in the film to explain their motivation but the film is definitely anti-war/Bush, not just anti-stop-loss.

Timothy Olyphant is telling in his role of the commanding officer; we need to see more of him.